The invention relates to products that record, store and play audio selections from a compact disc or other audio source.
Audio programs are routinely recorded and stored in digital form. Many compact discs contain songs, musical compositions and other audio programs in digital form. There are many types of compact disk players. Some are contained in large audio systems with amplifiers and speakers. Other compact disk players are portable and connected to headphones. Most compact disks are prerecorded at a recording studio.
Compact disks can also be played on the CD drive of many computer systems. Since the audio programs on the CD are in digital form it is possible to copy those digital programs and save them as digital audio files in the memory of the computer system. Furthermore, it is also possible to transfer those digital audio files to other computers.
Recently, portable audio players have been introduced that contain a memory into which digital audio files can be loaded. Some popular players called RIOs or MP-3 players allow the owner to store within a memory in the player music programs in digital form copied from a CD player or computer memory. The owner may then select and play audio files from the memory of the portable player.
There are now available in the marketplace enhanced CD""s that contain not only tracks of audio files but also other information such as artist name, song title, length of song, track associated with each song, and even lyrics. Some audio players have hardware and associated software that can read this information and display it on a display. Consequently, as a song is playing the user can see the song title and artist name on the display.
Radio broadcasters have had similar equipment that display text information about audio selections being played since the early 1990""s. One such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,161,251 to Mankovitz. That system relies upon a digital code unique to each audio selection being present on the disk with the audio selection. The information can be displayed during, immediately after or immediately prior to the audio selection being played. Mankovitz also teaches that the text information and associated audio files can be selected and played in any desired order.
Although the system disclosed in the ""251 patent and the enhanced CD players work well, they rely upon CD""s that contain information about the audio selections on the disk Yet, many people have CD""s that do not contain this information. Although these CD""s could be played on these devices, no text information can be displayed.
Databases have been compiled that contain artist name, album or CD titles, track location and song length for hundreds of recordings. Some of these databases are available to the public over the internet and are searchable. One such database is owned by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. and can be accessed at web site www.freedb.org.
Standard CD audio recordings that are not enhanced have been available in the market for many years and are still being sold. There is a need for a digital audio player that can not only read enhanced CD""s but that can also provide similar information to the user about CD""s that are not enhanced. That information may include artist name, song title, track location and other data.
There is also a need for a digital audio recorder that can receive audio programs in analog form, record them in digital form and store the recorded programs along with associated text information.
There is also a need for a digital audio recorder that can receive audio files from a personal computer or another digital audio player.
I provide a digital audio recorder having analog inputs, digital inputs and a compact disk player for playing at least one compact disk having multiple tracks as well as a hard drive and associated memory. The memory contains a database containing data relating to specific CD""s such as album name, artist name, song title, and track, and may also contain playlists. The playlists can be loaded by the manufacturer or created by the user. There are correlations among the data such as album name to artist name, album name to song title, album name to playlist, artist name to song title, artist name to playlist, song title to playlist, and song title to track. I prefer to provide a second memory in which the digital audio files are stored. The player also has a display or external video output to a TV that can display selected album name and song to be played as well as other data selected from the database. Of course there is an audio output to which a speaker, amplifier or headphone can be connected and at least one button or knob for operating the player. A central processor is connected to the compact disk player, the hard drive and associated memory, the second memory, the display, the audio output and the buttons or knobs. Turning knobs or pushing buttons directs signals to the central processor and enables a user to operate the compact disk player, store in the second memory audio selections from a disk placed in the compact disk player or from an analog to digital data stream, select and create playlists, and output audio selections contained in the second memory in an order according to a selected playlist. I also provide a keyboard removably connected to the central processor in a manner to enable a user to input data into the database. A preferred keyboard communicates with the player through infrared signals.